Finding Inspiration Within Yourself | The Millennial Edit
Much of what we do as musicians is reliant on a steady stream of inspiration. That’s why our hardest times can often be when the motivation has run dry. In this week’s installment of the tonebase blog, Rosie Bennet shares her approach to finding inspiration within yourself when it seems to be gone.
Life as a musician can often be draining.
We spend long hours critiquing ourselves, delving into the root of our mistakes, trying to reroute paths in our brains that are holding us back.
Creativity is an integral but not sole part of what we do.
A lot of a musician’s life must be analysis and logic, problem solving, fun things that we are all capable of, little puzzles of how our fingers work, how we can breathe life into music written on the page, how we can keep our minds on track during a performance, how to cultivate an all controlling brain, whilst being able to switch off completely.
It’s complicated. Inspiration is also complicated.
At a certain point in our lives we may have been pouring over books about classical guitar technique or become completely seduced by the history of flamenco music, but these fascinations do not always last.
It is both sensible and foolish to assume that a lack of lust for these topics equals a lower level of inspiration.
I think the main beef with inspiration (or lack thereof) comes mainly from the fact that we associate being inspired with being passionate, and being passionate with working hard, and working hard with getting results, and getting results with being successful.
Personally, I believe that success is contentment with your achievements.
It is possible to feel successful with very little. We do not need massive amounts of money, power or respect to feel successful in our lives, after all a perfect meringue or the smile from a crying baby can be success too!
We can be passionate about what we do whilst experiencing periods of low inspiration.
As with all labors of love, we must recognize that love is not only the lust we feel during first or particular moments of heightened interest, but that a major element of love is dedication.
Provided that we can afford to be dedicated, we will still get results, still achieve our personal successes.
Once we begin to rewire our brains that are so focused on searching for inspiration, to instead sit to work every day and prove our dedication, we will start to discover that we are the ones creating our inspiration.
That in the end inspiration is not external at all, everything we perceive comes from us anyway!
About Rosie Bennet
Born in London in 1996, Rosie started playing guitar at age seven. She received her early musical education at The Yehudi Menuhin School of Music and went on to study with Zoran Dukic (The Hague, NL), Johan Fostier (Tilburg, NL), Rene Izquierdo (Milwaukee, USA) and Raphaella Smits (Leuven, BE). She has performed in festivals all over Europe, including Open Guitar Festival in Křivoklát, Czech Republic, Glasgow’s Big Guitar Weekend, Scotland, Porziano Music Festival, Italy and the West Dean guitar Festival, UK. Highlights of her concert career include performances at Wigmore Hall, London, The North Wall, Oxford and concerts given on El Camino De Santiago.
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